


now commence to kick each brick apart

by misandrywitch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Friendship, Graduation, Not Canon Compliant, mental health, symbolic poster burning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 13:27:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4139289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want to go into the backyard, smoke a joint with you and burn that fucking poster,” Jack says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now commence to kick each brick apart

**Author's Note:**

> shittybknights.tumblr.com
> 
> this was written way way before the end of bitty's soph year updated, so the circumstances around jack signing are different. i still think this scene happens, though.

About two months before their graduation, Shitty asks Jack to make a list.

“Of what we’re gonna do our last goddamned month of school you motherfucker!” Shitty yells when Jack gives him a befuddled look. They’re in practice, at a break between drills leaning up against the glass and Jack had just been thinking about how he was going to miss the inside of Faber even with the rest of the team’s seven-in-the-morning complaints underway. It’s like Shitty has read his mind.

“It’s not every day we spring from the cold hard cage of collegiate life into the wide wide world of,” Shitty pauses. “Well, okay more collegiate life but also the National Hockey League. We gotta celebrate it! We gotta make it matter!”

“Um,” Jack says. He has no idea what to say. “I’ll get back to you.” Shitty grins and goes in for a hug and Jack flees across the ice and tells everyone to get back to it.  

 

 

One of the things Jack remembers most from the summer before the draft-that-wasn't was the feeling of possibility. His career, his future had been imbued with promise, with the sense that anything could happen if he wanted it to and if he worked hard enough for it. It had come from everywhere, his potential, the certainty that he would be great. And it had sat at horrible odds with his own knowledge that he would never be good enough, that he'd never be able to live up to what they saw. Jack had wanted it, and he had worked for it, and it hadn't been enough. 

He's no longer naive enough to think this will be like that was, wide open possibility and a huge canvas of could-be's in front of him. Jack knows better. 

It feels a little bit like that though, just a little. Still, he knows better. 

 

 

“What do people do to celebrate graduation?” Jack poses the question at breakfast, to a collection of shrugs and suggestions. 

“Get a stupid tattoo!”

“Game of Thrones marathon?”

“A roadtrip.”

“We went camping for our high school graduation, way fun. My cousin and I did shrooms.”

“Just throw a big party, it’s what we’re gonna do anyway.”

“That’s the opposite of the point,” Shitty says emphatically. “The point is to not do something you’ve done before, or something you’re gonna do anyway. It’s to make it matter. It has to, you know, be really special!” Lardo, sitting next to Jack at the table, sighs heavily and next to her Bitty’s face falls visibly. Jack’s stomach drops a little. “And anyway,” Shitty continues, turning back to his French toast, “Game of Thrones is sexist bullcrap. So that’s out.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Jack says again, and he pats Lardo on the shoulder and finishes his breakfast.

 

 

 

 

The thing is, there are things that Jack wants, but he doesn’t know how to describe them in a way that’s accomplishable in his two months of school.

He doesn’t know how to take all of what Samwell and this hockey team and these people, Shitty specifically but all of them, and turn that feeling into something that can be done, can be celebrated. That’s something that can be done on the ice. Actions have meanings that go beyond words.

Bitty’s presence over his shoulder, lining up the puck so he can score, that means something that he doesn’t ever know how to say after the fact. Ransom and Holster’s perfect practically mind-reading coordination means something he doesn’t know if they vocalize. The way they come together, all 20-something men plus Lardo watching it happen, and win or lose, struggle or come out on top, has meaning that Jack understands and that Jack can participate in. They have each other’s backs. They’re all on each other’s side. Each game’s got a story of its own and it’s one he knows how to play a part in, how to seize on the moment and look for opportunity and celebrate the win.

Shitty wants to celebrate this win, their graduation. It feels like a win, which Jack didn’t think it ever would. It means a lot more than just a piece of paper with his name on it. But he doesn’t know what.

He thinks in plays, in action, movements of the body and their coordinated muscles changing and stretching, and in dates and their corresponding meanings (this is the date of the Battle of Stalingrad, this is the date his father won his first Stanley Cup, this is the day he OD’d). It’s in lists: here’s everything you need to do this week. Here’s everything you did wrong last year. Here’s every time you let your mother down. Here’s every pie Eric Bittle baked in the month of September.

And underneath that there’s the panic. Fuzzy, rising and falling, sometimes nonsense and sometimes a litany of things he can’t let himself forget, a base instinct that shuts him down to nothing more than rapid-fire bodily functions and his own breathing. 

 

Shitty thinks in big extravagant metaphors, in symbolism and encoded meaning and long complicated words and jumbled streams of consciousness, bursts of inspiration, ups and downs. He wants something that will mean something later, something with gravitas.

  
He’ll come up with something anyway, Jack figures. He’s better at that stuff.

 

 

 

“You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to,” Bitty says diplomatically, when Jack brings it up.

They’re getting coffee, and it’s warm and springtime sunny. Jack had stopped to take a few photos of the river on their way because of the light on the water, so Bitty had made fun of him and then had paused to tap out something on his phone, meaning Jack had to put down his camera and chirp him. Just asking for it, really. He’d teased him again with Bitty had ordered some ridiculous drink with chocolate chips and whipped cream, resulting in Bitty pursing his lips and putting his hands on his hips in an exasperated ‘don’t start with me’ way.

“I’m stress drinking this giant cup of coffee because I can’t stress bake because my oven’s not working!” he had said emphatically, and then the conversation had moved on to the state of the oven, to the state of Shitty’s hair as his grandparents are apparently coming for graduation, to Shitty’s big plans.

“We could just, I dunno, have a team dinner? Nothing fancy. You don’t have to make a big deal about it if you don’t want to, unless you want to in which case we can!” Bitty’s statement is definitive and certain and earnest, and Jack wonders briefly what it would be like to live in his head where worries get channeled out his fingers and into food.

“If your oven’s still alive, you mean,” Jack says, and Bitty sighs dramatically and flops his head onto the table between them.

“Don’t say that,” Bitty groans. “Don’t jinx it. If Dex can’t fix her this time I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll die probably, I won’t make it through finals.”

Jack feels a momentary twinge of something-- annoyance? -- that Bitty hasn’t asked him to fix the oven, before he rationalizes that he’s never shown any particular skill or interest in fixing an oven or anything like it. He probably could, if he really tried, just to see Bitty’s face.

“That might be better for your bank account,” he says, and Bitty thumps his head on the table again.

“But bad for my mental well being! And my happiness. My happiness is most important here!” His head pops back up. He’s a little pink in the face and his hair, recently cut post playoffs (“So campus tours stop assuming I am a high school student, good lord”) is very gold in the bright sun. Bitty smiles, and Jack thinks that what he really wants is not something Shitty can give him, however magical he may sometimes seem to be.

“Did you do anything for your high school graduation?” Jack asks, and Bitty makes a face.

“Lord,” he says. “Run in the other direction as fast as I could? And get cried on by my mother. She and her friends threw me a party, it was the event of the year let me tell you, ten middle-aged women and me. Better company than most of the people I went to high school with.”

“Did I miss out?” Jack asks, and Bitty frowns a little. “I didn’t really have a high school graduation per se,” Jack says.

“No,” Bitty says. “If you want to relive it, my mother can throw you a party or you can have a drink dumped on you at prom by some football players or something.”

Bitty always seems so eponymously lighthearted and effervescent that sometimes it’s easy to forget about the fact that his pre-college years seem more like survival than education. Bitty doesn’t talk about it much. Once, Ransom had asked him why he’d quit figure skating and Bitty had laughed brightly and said something about “one too many nights in a utility closet,” which could have been a joke but probably wasn’t, and Jack’s chest had hurt for a long time after that. He wonders what Bitty had been like at sixteen, a stronger accent and a bad haircut, hanging out with his mom, feeling alone. He wonders if they’d have gotten along.

“Earth to Jack,” Bitty says, and flings the crumpled-up wrapper from his straw in Jack’s direction. It bounces off Jack’s forehead, and Bitty laughs so Jack laughs too. He grabs the wrapper and flicks it off the tip of his finger, aiming for Bitty’s nose, but it goes a little low and falls right down the front of Bitty’s shirt.

“Sorry,” Jack says, horrified.

“Touchdown!” Bitty laughs, and stands up to lift up the hem of his shirt so the paper falls out. Jack catches himself staring probably a beat too long, and glances down at his hands. “You’re just off in your own little world aren’t you, Captain?” Bitty says as he picks up his cup to go toss it in the trash. He walks off, and Jack tells himself very firmly not to blush.

It doesn’t work, but it’s an A+ effort.

More and more these days, Jack is beginning to feel that’s often enough.

 

 

 

 

That doesn't mean Jack hasn't stopped being scared. He's not sure he'll ever stop being scared. Sometimes, it's all he is: the fear, the history, the newspaper headlines, the last name. Sometimes he isn't anything more than that. 

But other times he's not. 

 

 

 

 

Jack signs in the middle of April. That means something.

He calls his parents, and then he calls Shitty in his bedroom. Shitty yells loud enough that he attracts everyone else’s attention, and Jack finds himself in the middle of a full-Haus-hug that transforms very rapidly into a full-Haus celebration. It travels down the stairs into the living room, and someone calls the rest of the team and really it's a textbook case for how these people can turn anything into a kegster given energy and impetus and enough solo cups. Jack lets it happen. He has a beer and listens to Holster and Ransom and Lardo chanting his name (“ZIMM-ER-MANNN ZIMM-ER-MANNNN”) and doesn’t complain when they turn up the music and lets himself be congratulated. Shitty keeps hugging him, beside himself and grinning from ear to ear. Lardo gives him a solid high five. Chowder stammers in excitement for five minutes.

The party devolves pretty quickly into something much bigger, as anything with Ransom and Holster at the center tends to, and when people start pushing by him that Jack doesn't know, he steps up the stairs and goes out onto the roof.

It’s April. The snow that had covered Samwell is gone, and it’s been blustery and a little rainy but nice all the same. Downstairs, people are singing along to something Jack should probably know but doesn’t. It’s getting dark, and he takes a deep breath and sips his beer.

Ten minutes pass before someone knocks on the window frame behind him, and Jack turns to see Bitty crawling through his own bedroom window with a bottle in one hand and a plate in the other.

“They discovered the rhubarb I’d hidden in the back of the fridge,” he says. “Like piranhas, or hyenas? Anyway, I saved you a piece before it was devoured, seeing as we’re celebrating you.” Jack reaches out to grab the plate and his mostly-full beer bottle from him so Bitty can slide across the shingles with both hands free.

“Thanks,” he says.

“I’ve never seen people eat pie as fast as this team can, and I have a lot of boy cousins,” Bitty says. He sits down next to Jack and crosses his legs and takes his beer bottle back. Their fingers touch.

“A hockey team full of cousins?” It’s a funny image, lots of blonde Bittles. They probably all get together on the fourth of July and grill burgers together.

“No, thank goodness. Mostly they play football. My cousin Ben’s into photography though, he likes to do landscapes. Oh! I came up here to tell you Shitty wants to do a toast.”

Jack makes a face, and Bitty bumps into his shoulder with his own then sips from his bottle.

“He wants to tell that story about how you defended the Haus from the football team,” Bitty says, teasing.

“I know,” Jack says. “That’s why I escaped. I know all his tricks.” He snatches Bitty’s beer and takes a sip of it; it’s something wheat, a little sweet and lighter than he likes when he does drink beer. He doesn’t mind it. “I don’t mind not being the center of attention right now. I’m not good at stuff like that.”

“You’re fine,” Bitty says. “I just get emotional and cry. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Aren’t figure skating champions supposed to like being the center of attention?” Jack says slyly.

“Yes, and I am weeping in every photo taken after my performance in Southern Junior Regionals 2010. People throw roses at me, I cry. Just a natural reaction I guess,” Bitty takes his beer back and starts to get up. “Anyway, I came up here to feed you not chat your ear off about my emotional acrobatics so I’ll leave you in peace.”

Last year, Jack would have just thanked him for the pie and let him go. Now, he shakes his head. “I don’t mind,” he says. “You aren’t bothering me.”

Bitty stops. “Well, okay,” he says. “I was a bit worried about getting pulled in to celebrity shot Lardo’s game of pong. Her commitment to the game puts all of us to shame, and I don’t want to have to pretend to faint to avoid embarrassing myself like last time.” He sits back down, close enough that their arms are touching, just barely. “Nice out here.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Sure is.” He picks up the plate. “I’m going to eat your celebratory pie now.”

“You go right ahead,” Bitty says. “And uh,” he pauses, “Jack. Congrats. Really.”

There’s warmth in Jack’s chest and he lets it sit there, doesn't push it down or worry it away. Maybe it’s the pie, or the stars coming out. Maybe it’s just Bitty. Bitty extends his beer bottle by the neck and Jack clinks his own against it.

“Thanks, Bitty,” he says. Bitty smiles and sips his beer and leans back so his back is resting against the side of the house, stretching his legs in front of him. He steals a piece of the crust off Jack’s plate, looks pleased with himself as he pops it into his mouth. It is really good.

They finish the slice of pie together and watch the rest of the daylight vanish, and Jack feels warm inside and out.

 

 

 

 

 

He wakes up in the middle of the night, sure he’s made the wrong choice.

His blankets are heavy and suffocating and he’s covered all over in prickly sweat and he can’t breathe, and he’s sure that he’s made the wrong choice, chosen the wrong team, that he’s not going to live up to what they want, that they’ll think he isn’t worth it, that he isn’t good enough, isn’t good enough, isn’t good enough--

Jack turns on the shower and sits in the ice-cold water until his breathing comes easy again. It takes a long time.

 

 

 

 

He gets up the next morning and goes to find Lardo because Shitty is hungover, Bitty’s still asleep and Ransom and Holster are arguing about something in the living room. Lardo texts him to let him know she’s getting work done in the studio across campus, which is what Jack hopes to hear. He goes on his run and aims for the art building.

Lardo is working on some kind of mixed-media sculpture piece, canvas and large metal beams and metal shapes she spent the last week welding. “Oh, good,” she says when he walks in the open studio’s back doors towards her. “I was just about to go hunting for someone tall and beefy. Wanna help me lift these up to the top of this?”

There are several metal beams stacked next to her on the floor, and she’s balanced a ladder on the side of the whole situation. It looks a little bit precarious. The whole thing's at least twice as tall as she is, and Jack couldn't guess what it means but he supposes he isn't supposed to know for sure. 

“A big project first thing in the morning,” Jack says.

“Yeah, meant to do this yesterday but that didn’t happen,” Lardo says. She’s wearing a Batman t-shirt and cutoffs and sneakers and a sweatshirt that’s probably Shitty’s.

“Sorry,” Jack says.

“No worries,” Lardo says cheerfully. “Now be quiet and lift, huh? There’s a reason why I hang around all you athletes and it’s not how you smell, believe me.”

Jack laughs, and sets to work.

“How’s it feel?” Lardo asks eventually, once they get the beam in place.

To almost anyone else Jack might answer with a ‘great’ or a ‘can’t wait.’ He has the feeling he’ll be answering that one a lot in the next few weeks. He hasn’t even thought about going through the various messages on his phone. None from Parse. That’s more of a relief than anything.

“I’m terrified,” he says. “I mean it’s, uh. It’s what I’ve wanted. I’m excited. But I’m also scared shitless.”

Lardo folds her arms on one rung of the ladder and rests her head on them, looking at him. “I think,” she says, “that’s the only sane way to feel, really.”

“Doesn’t feel that way,” Jack says.

“Dude,” Lardo says. “Everyone’s got reason to be nervous about new shit, and this is new big shit.” She unfolds her arms. “C’mon, help me move this next one.”

Lardo, Jack thinks as he helps her finagle the next beam into place in her sculpture, is a master of saying what needs to be said without actually putting it to words. Maybe it’s why she’s such a talented artist.

“Speaking of new shit,” Jack says as they slot the piece into place and Lardo climbs up the ladder again to glue it. “How’s Shits?”

“Elegant segue,” Lardo laughs as she messes with her paintbrush. “He’s--” she pauses. “Y’know, he’s--”

“What did he do?” Jack asks, alarmed. Lardo snorts.

“Nothing, oh my God. He’s good. It’s good, it’s just--” she smiles. She looks a little flustered. Shitty and Lardo had-- well-- begun dating was simultaneously too simple and too complicated to describe the extent of their relationship but they’d sorted some things out and were together, in a somewhat different way than they had been together before, or so Jack had gathered. It was the kind of thing that would have made him very anxious but that neither of them seemed to be very concerned about at all.

“It’s funny because stuff’s so different but it’s also the same,” she says after a minute. “It’s not a big deal but it was good to, I don’t know, figure it out. Get it out there. I feel pretty stupid for being so worked up about it, you know.”

Lardo had been worked up about it, her crush on Shitty and what that meant, but Jack didn’t blame her. She makes it sound easy but he knows it wasn’t. “It wasn’t stupid,” he says.

“I think I was afraid of things changing, things I knew getting ruined.” Lardo says slowly. Jack nods, because he understands. He moves to pick up the last metal piece, but Lardo surprises him and keeps talking.

“But then, y’know, it dawned on me that things change regardless of how we feel about them,” she says. “You can’t stop stuff from changing just because you’re afraid it might be different, and just because they change doesn’t mean they’re gonna be bad.” She shrugs. “Put stuff in perspective I guess.”

She frowns up at her piece and Jack studies her, mulling over her words. He’s not sure if she’s talking about herself, or about him, or about Shitty or Bitty or any and all of them.

Sometimes even when you think things change for the worse, they end up changing for the better, Jack thinks. Isn’t that funny.

“And anyway,” Lardo says sagely. “I wasn’t about to just throw away someone who’s idea of hooking up is going down on you for an hour. Even if his mustache tickles.”

Jack chokes. She turns around to look at him, paintbrush in one hand.

“You two ever gonna tell me if,” she waggles her eyebrows and the paintbrush, “something went down during, I dunno, your freshman year? Shits is real buttoned up about it which makes me sure it did because he isn’t buttoned up about anything.”

Jack laughs. “I think you’re better off asking him,” he says.

“That’s what he always says,” Lardo sighs. “Okay, last one, c’mon.”

“I’ll miss you,” he says, which is true.

“It’s too early for that,” Lardo says, and she smiles. “I’ll miss the fuck out of you too, bud. Bits and I will come visit, you know, if you get us tickets.”

“On that condition, eh?”

“Well, I don’t know about Bitty,” Lardo says. “He might visit for other reasons.”

“Shut up and lift with your hips,” Jack says, and Lardo laughs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s on the phone with his mother when it dawns on him.

Jack’s lying on his bed with his phone against his ear listening to her summarize the plot of the murder mystery she’s currently watching and he happens to glance up at his bedroom wall. He’s just barely started thinking about packing (which makes him feel like he wants to die) and he doesn’t have all that much on his walls anyway; some photos of his family, some of his peewee team and the Samwell lineup from the last few years. A few posters of country singers. And the one right by the bathroom door that reads BE BETTER in white letters. It’s hung there since he moved in and he’s never-- well. He’s never felt like he deserved not to have it hanging on his wall.

For some reason, Jack’s hands are suddenly very clammy and his heart is hammering, hard.

“Mom?” he says into the phone. “Something just came up. Can I call you back?”

“Of course honey,” she says. “You email me those apartment listings? I’ll look at them.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, then “Love you,” because he never used to say that often enough.

“Love you too,” she says and hangs up. Jack gets up off his bed and hopes to god that Shitty is the only person home.

 

Shitty’s sprawled out on his bed in his Wonder Woman underwear when Jack knocks on his door and then opens it. Shitty waves him over and pats the spot on his bed next to him while waggling his eyebrows.

“Shits,” Jack says. “I know what we’re gonna do.”

“Drive a car off a cliff Thelma and Louise style?” Shitty asks. “Because that’s a no-go, I like living. Oh, fuck, Zimmermann, if you say ‘watch Band of Brothers’ I’m going to sob into my pillow in despair.”

“No,” Jack says. “Though, I mean, I’m always up to--”

“No!” Shitty flings himself dramatically onto his back and gazes up at Jack upside down. He waves his arms for emphasis. “No. Don’t leave me hanging here, brah, don’t leave me out in the cold, come the fuck on.”

“I want to go into the backyard, smoke a joint with you and burn that fucking poster,” Jack says.

Shitty moves so fast he falls right off his bed and when he surfaces he looks like someone has let him loose in an all-you-can-eat weed brownie buffet.

“You miracle,” he breathes. “You angelic fucking masterpiece of a man, you-- you--” he appears to be at a loss for words. “God I fucking love you,” he manages finally. “And I hate that fucking poster. Do I have to put pants on?”

“Nope,” Jack shakes his head, and Shitty lets out a triumphant yell and follows Jack across the hall.

 

Jack stares the poster down for a minute in silence, Shitty standing behind him. He’d bought it the first week at Samwell on a whim during one of those poster sales outside the library before classes had begun. It was the kind of thing he’d felt he needed to walk past every day. A promise. A commitment. A reminder. It had hung in his freshman dorm and then in this room in the Haus and it was going to have to come down sooner or later because there was only so much time left.

Shitty had always hated it. It had, on several different occasions, launched him into a diatribe about the problems with society’s obsessions with constant self improvement and once, very memorably, a several hour long rant about capitalism and mental illness that’s still rattling around in Jack’s brain sometimes. Once, last year, Shitty had just scowled at it and clapped him on the shoulder and said “Only listen to that fucking thing if that’s what you really want, man,” and Jack hadn’t known how to answer him.

It has to come down sooner or later.

He takes a breath, and methodically peels it off the wall so the tape doesn’t pull at the paint, and Shitty punches the air behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

The Haus is, thankfully, quiet. Lardo and Bitty are apparently getting dinner with some of Lardo’s theatre friends and Ransom and Holster are cheering on some of their swim team friends at a meet. Shitty methodically rolls them two joints and hands one to Jack but then stops and looks at the poster. He runs his finger along the edge.

“Poster board’s not gonna burn right, is it,” he says, sounding disappointed.

“No,” Jack says firmly. “You’re not going to roll with that. I don’t want to think what toxins and glue are in that.”

“Alright, grandma,” Shitty says, then pulls out his lighter and lights them both up. They go out into the backyard.

 

Jack has smoked twice in his life, both times with Shitty, because he’s generally unenthusiastic about the idea of breathing anything foreign into his lungs that he doesn’t have to. Once had been his freshman year just to try it because Shitty had carried on for years about how it helps him “log out of my own fucking brain, man.” It had made Jack feel a bit too loose on the inside, a bit too quick with his words and slow with his body. But it had shut things up, for a bit, which was exactly why Jack hadn’t made it a habit.

The second time they’d done it, it had been because Jack had needed to tell Shitty something and wasn’t sure if he could otherwise. Now they’re at number three, and maybe that means something too.

 

“Want to give it a eulogy?” Shitty asks, placing the metal trashcan from the kitchen on the lawn. “Play a dirge? Or one of your really depressing country songs?”

“Shut up,” Jack shakes his head, joint in his mouth. He’s beginning to feel a bit soft in the middle. The evening is quiet except for their voices.

“You wanna give a speech?” Jack gives him a look. “I can give a speech? Speech, speech--” Shitty starts chanting.

“The first time I met you, I thought I was gonna hate you,” Jack says, and Shitty stops mid-chant to stare at him. “I thought you were gonna be a major tool and that you’d drive me up the wall.”

“This speech isn’t making me feel very inspired,” Shitty looks as indignant as you can in a plaid puffy vest.

“I’m commemorating our friendship,” Jack says firmly. “That’s what you want, right? You proved me wrong pretty fast, that’s my point.”

“Before I met you I thought you were gonna be a spoiled rich kid with a cocaine problem and a stick up your ass,” Shitty says, and Jack blinks.

“Well,” he says. “The cocaine rumors sold better with the tabloids than the truth, I think. They were big for a while.”

“You proved me the fuck wrong too, brah,” Shitty says. “Started from the bottom now we’re here. And now I know you love me, hah!”

The inside of Jack’s head feels warm and quiet. “I’ll replace this poster with a big photo of your facial hair,” he says. “Maybe I’ll put one in my wallet.”

“Dude, you’re thinking way too small here,” Shitty says. “I want a Jack Zimmermann body pillow, and I demand you tattoo my countenance on your upper arm.” He cackles for a good ten seconds, and Jack laughs too.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get rid of this thing.” Shitty holds out the poster and hands Jack his lighter and he flicks it until the flame spurts up. His heart is beating hard but steady in his chest and Jack takes a few deep breaths.

 

It’s just a poster, just ink on paper. Lighting it on fire doesn’t actually really mean anything has changed.

“Things change regardless of how we feel about them,” Lardo’s voice says in his head.

 

Jack’s hands shake a little so the flame wavers in front of his face, a bright pinpoint of light from the lighter. It’s getting dark. Most of the lights in the Haus are off. The light is giving him away, the tremor in his fingers, his nerves. Shitty doesn’t say anything.

 

“Okay,” he says, and he puts the tip of the flame to the edge of the paper.

 

 

 

It doesn’t catch.

It smokes a bit but the flame doesn’t catch. Jack pulls the lighter back, his stomach dropping.

“Give it a sec,” Shitty says. “These things take time, man.”

A minute later, the flame catches and starts creeping up the edge of the poster. “Told you!” Shitty yells, and hands one corner of it to Jack, taking the lighter. He runs the flame along the bottom and smoke starts curling up there too. Jack holds it at arm’s length and watches and finds he’s grinning as the orange heat creeps up the side. It’s just a poster. But it feels--

“Fuck yeah!” Shitty yells. “Eat it, you piece of shit!”

“You dunk this thing in gasoline or what?” Jack yells. For some reason, the moment warrants yelling.

“I absolutely did not!”

The fire is starting to work its way up to the corner so Jack switches hands before it can reach his fingers.

“Why now?” Shitty asks. Jack shrugs.

“It had to come down sometime,” he says. He pauses. “Maybe it still applies but--”

“Brah,” Shitty snaps. “That poster never fucking applied to you.” Jack looks at him. Shitty has his arms crossed over his chest and he’s procured another joint from somewhere mysterious. He’s a ridiculous figure, in his Wonder Woman underpants and his puffy vest, but he’s Jack’s best friend and his voice is dead serious.

“You’re the best damned dude I know,” Shitty says.

Jack opens his mouth and doesn’t know what to say, so he looks away back towards the burning poster. The word BETTER is unreadable, just scorched blackness.

“I know you don’t always believe me,” Shitty says. “That’s okay. Trust me, yeah? I’m always right about shit like this.” Jack starts laughing so the poster wobbles precariously in his hands. “Good judge of character, me,” Shitty says firmly, and he holds out the joint to the edge of the poster until it lights, and then he sticks it into his mouth in a very final sort of way.

“You look ridiculous right now,” Jack says. His laughter’s loosened up something inside him. He steps over and puts his arm around Shitty’s shoulders, and Shitty puts his arm around Jack’s waist and they stand next to each other, the rectangle of smoke and fire held out in front of them.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shitty says. “This is official courtroom attire, man.”

"Those your good luck boxers?"

Shitty squeezes Jack’s middle. “We fucking did it, Jacky boy,” he says. “You and me. You better let that bad boy go, it's gonna get your fingers.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, and squeezes back. “Guess we did.” He drops the flaming poster into the trashcan and takes the joint from Shitty. Lights have come on in the Haus kitchen; someone’s home. Jack takes it in, the windows and the streetlamps on the road on the other side of the fence, someone’s music playing down the street. Smoke is twisting out of the trashcan into the sky, grey against almost-black, like wings maybe, or a balloon.

  


 

 

Maybe this is a date that isn’t quantifiable, doesn’t have a short summary and an easy descriptor that will let him look back later and think “Today was the day I tore that poster down off my bedroom wall and burnt it” because it’s so much bigger than that. Maybe there isn’t a way to put it into words. Maybe that’s alright.

Maybe he doesn’t want it to be over. That thought is so funny. Jack at 18 would have laughed his ass off knowing that fact, that Jack now is standing in the backyard of a run-down house on a university campus with a joint in his mouth and his arm around his mostly-naked best friend with no place on earth he’d rather be.

 

 

 

“Who the fuck thought to put that on a poster anyway?” Shitty asks eventually. “Like, who’s fucking idea was that? It’s creepy and horrific. Big Fucking Brother status. Get Better-- or the robot overlords will find you.”

“We have a PM,” Jack says. “Not overlords.”

“‘Better’ is subjective, right? How do you be better? You can’t take antibiotics for the fallible nature of the human condition, you know? You can’t train that outta your system, it’s just how we are. It’s not a state! You can’t be it. You can work towards it I guess, but then it’s an ideal or a goal or something to get you out of bed in the morning when you’re depressed."

"When you put it like that, it is pretty messed up," Jack says. Better's not a state, he thinks. Better's not a place. 

"I could do a hundred times better, bro. 'Be content with the knowledge that we're all just existing for a very short period of time on a big chunk of rock hurtling through space and all we can do is be good to the people we care about and take no shit from the people we don't.' How's that? Much better. Fuck you, poster writers.” Shitty points an accusing finger.

“Fuck ‘em,” Jack agrees. 

“Fuck that!” Shitty yells. “Right? Jesus!”

“Fuck you,” Jack directs this to the smoking trashcan.

Shitty bounces up and down so Jack has to concentrate to keep ahold of him. “Gonna stick your ashes where the sun don’t fucking shine!”

“Fuck you!” Jack yells, because it seems like a moment for yelling and he doesn’t know what else to yell.

“Yeah!” Shitty hollers, practically in his ear. “Fuck off!”

“What the hell is going on out here?” A voice says from the house and they freeze. Lardo and Bitty have both come out the back door and are staring at them. “Are y’all alright?” Bitty asks, looking very concerned.

Jack and Shitty stare at them, Jack in his sweatpants and Shitty in his underwear, arms around each other, a joint in Jack’s hand and the smoking flaming trashcan on the grass between them. They probably look completely insane. Jack can’t help it. He starts giggling.

“We’re making history,” Shitty says, which makes Jack double over, taking Shitty with him because he’s arm’s still around Shitty’s middle.

“Oh my god,” Lardo says in utter and perfect bewilderment. “Are you stoned?”

“Almost always,” Shitty says, very serenely considering he’s sideways.

“Not you,” Lardo rolls her eyes and crosses the lawn, Bitty following her. “You.”

"Oh Captain my Captain," Shitty crows. "Is stoned, yeah." 

Jack attempts to gather himself and stands back up. “Fuck off,” he says. “I’m graduating.”

“Well then you gotta share, Zimmermann,” Lardo snatches the joint and grins. Shitty drops his free arm over her shoulders. “Bits?” She extends the joint to Bitty, who takes it.

“Y’all are burning what exactly?” he asks. “Because this looks a little, uh--” he doesn’t seem to have the words to describe what they look like so he just stick the joint in his mouth, which makes Shitty start laughing again.

“Takin’ out the trash,” he manages.

“Fuck you,” Jack says to the poster again. It bears no resemblance to what it used to be. He feels tired, and light. “Could we make s’mores over that?” Shitty howls with laughter.

“If that fire gets any bigger someone’s gonna call the cops,” Lardo points out.

“I bet we could do it over the grill,” Bitty shrugs. “I know we’ve got chocolate somewhere, and I could make homemade marshmallows but I also think y’all don’t really care at this point, huh?”

“That’s what I like about you, Bits. Resourceful,” Shitty says. “Come here.” He wrangles Bitty into his space which is difficult seeing as he’s got Lardo under one arm and Jack under the other. Bitty ends up between Shitty and Jack, his head resting more or less on both of their shoulders, and he slides one arm around Shitty’s waist and the other around Jack’s. A year ago Jack probably would have pulled away. A year ago he would have never have been here.

"Yo, if you were gonna symbolically burn your poster you could've told me. I would've recorded it," Lardo says. "Home video that shit."

"It was pretty spontaneous," Jack shrugs.

"Don't say that to me," Lardo says. "There are people who probably spend years thinking up this kind of thing and charge admission to watch it happen. The artist is present." Shitty wheezes and they laugh together, and Jack doesn't get the joke but he doesn't really mind.

He bumps his hips into Bitty’s and smiles, and Bitty smiles back.

  


Jack has lists in his head of the things he’s afraid of. They repeat themselves with all the other lists in there: here’s every time you let your mother down in the last six years. Here’s every pie Eric Bittle baked in the month of September. Here’s every phone call from Parse you maybe should have returned.

Maybe a poster's just a poster and burning it isn't anything more than fire and paper. Maybe it's still true, and maybe he's still scared. Maybe things will change and it'll mean some things are lost, or that things will get worse.

But maybe it won't, though. 

They make s’mores over coals in the grill, Bitty toasting the marshmallows on a fork until they figure out he's actually bad at getting them brown but not black. Jack supervises and they stand next to each other with the low heat from the grill between them and Jack pulls his hand back at the right time so they're perfect, melting and golden. Jack burns his fingers a little getting his off the fork and Shitty gets marshmallow in his mustache. The four of them sit in a circle to eat them, and the poster smolders for a while across the lawn. 

 

It's a nice night, Jack thinks. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'beginning song' by the decemberists ('if i am waiting, should i be waiting? i am hopeful, should i be hopeful?') i have a j zimms playlist that i'll post someday
> 
> i'm very fixated on jack & shitty hooking up their freshman year & i don't know why. sorry. it happened. this is all based on one of cait's textposts & got out of hand from there, as these things do.


End file.
